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Our local Christian radio station plays nothing but Christmas music for the entire month of December. I've been enjoying that song that goes something like "Mary, did you know". Do you know which song I'm talking about? It's the one that wonders if Mary fully knew and understood the magnitude of her situation...the mysterious miracle of her physically giving birth to the savior of the world. Impossible to imagine, really.

But the thought I've been pondering goes more like "Jesus, did you know?". Matthew says that Jesus would be called Immanuel which translated means "God with us". God with us. In diapers. In flesh. GOD in a mere human's body.

My question is this: did Jesus always know who he was?

It's clear that there was something different about him at a young age. I recall the time when he stayed behind in the temple to teach. His mom and dad found him there and he said something like "didn't you know I'd be in my Father's house?". It seems that he had at least an inkling (if not more) of who he was at that time...a good 15 or so years before he would start his "ministry".

But what about his first moments in the womb? What about his first moments on earth? Did he lie swaddled in clothes in those first moments of breathing with human lungs...smelling the aroma of animals shuffling around in the straw....smelling and feeling the warm skin of his mother....maybe seeing that amazing star which blazed with the news of his arrival even with those fuzzy newborn eyes...stretching his arms and legs to their full but still tiny length...

...during all of this, did he know why he was there? Did he think of ME? Did his heart swell with his love for me and did he cringe a little (or a lot) to know what he would endure to save me once and for all?